


bright horizons

by kay_emm_gee



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 09:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17180522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_emm_gee/pseuds/kay_emm_gee
Summary: Three years to the day that they defeated the Night King, and it still felt like they were fighting a war. A war against the remaining pockets of rebels, against feuding allies, against the snow and cold and meager food supplies left to their ravaged kingdom.It could be worse.But...it could be better.Dany knew what it was to rule in a broken land, and Jon knew what it was to lead broken men. Even so, sometimes the weight of the crown felt too heavy to bear, despite having each other to share the burden.The anniversary of the final battle always hits Jon particularly hard, and Dany does what she can to comfort him, even when he asks hard questions.





	bright horizons

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for the Jonerys Secret Santa event hosted by iceandfiresource.tumblr.com!

Dany rolled over, pulling the sheets with her as she blinked awake in the early morning light. Dawn had just broken, and Jon was standing out on the balcony. She watched him lazily, his silhouette coming into better focus as sleep fell away from her eyes.

As he moved to lean on the railing, she sat up. From the tense set of his shoulders, she knew he had no doubt been awake for hours. Thinking, brooding, letting his mind run in circles. She sighed. It was no surprise that he was anxious about the coming days.

_Three years, and it never got easier._

Dany slid off the bed. The sheets came with her, and she wrapped one around haphazardly to cover herself. The stones were cool beneath her feet as she padded over to her betrothed.

“Tell me you at least slept some last night,” she murmured, leaning on the doorway.

Jon half-turned his head, giving her the smallest of smiles. It couldn’t even really be called a smile, Dany realized. More of a brief upward flex of his mouth, genuine but so taut. Shaking her head, she walked out to stand beside him at the railing. 

“It will be alright,” she said. 

He huffed in response. Dany put a hand on his shoulder, and Jon dropped his head for a beat. Then he shifted his weight forward and looked at her. Her heart turned over in her chest as she watched some of the tension leave his face, the lines around his eyes softening as he continued staring. She let her hand drift up to the nape of his neck. Running her fingers through his hair, she hummed soothingly. Jon closed his eyes and turned his face upwards towards the pale sun.

Three years to the day that they defeated the Night King, and it still felt like they were fighting a war. A war against the remaining pockets of rebels, against feuding allies, against the snow and cold and meager food supplies left to their ravaged kingdom.

It could be worse.

But...it could be better.

Dany knew what it was to rule in a broken land, and Jon knew what it was to lead broken men. Even so, sometimes the weight of the crown felt too heavy to bear, despite having each other to share the burden.

The anniversary of the final battle always hit Jon particularly hard. So many had been lost that day, and all of them who fought felt the jagged pain of those losses. Still, Dany knew that the North had suffered the greatest in their war, and Jon would not let himself forget. He carried every death with him, and those deaths were particularly present on these days of remembrance.

“Do you…” Jon started, then sighed. After a beat, he turned to her and began again. “Do you ever think that the price was too high?”

Her fingers slowed, tangling in his hair. “The price of what?”

“Winning.”

“Are we winning?” She asked dryly.

He let out a huff of a laugh. “It doesn’t feel like it most of the time, does it? That we won?”

“If I learned anything in my time in exile, it’s that winning is an illusion,” she said. “There is always another enemy, be it man, beast, or otherwise, and you have to be ready to fight it.”

“You sound like Tyrion.”

Dany rolled her eyes. “It was bound to happen sooner or later, I suppose. He does talk an awful lot, and he is our Hand, after all. I will only be concerned if I start consuming a barrel’s worth of wine in a day as well.”

Jon didn’t seem to hear her, lost in his own thoughts. Finally, he repeated himself. “Was the price too high?”

She sighed. “Jon. Don’t.”

He turned to look at her, eyes serious. “Was it?”

“I...there is no real answer to that question. No good will come from trying over and over again to find one.”

“Sometimes I feel as if it was too high.” Jon shifted, hands fisting on the railing until his knuckles went white. “Far too much loss, for far too little gain.”

Dany shifted closer, trying to figure out how to shake him out of this melancholy, but then he continued.

“And then...sometimes, like this morning, I feel as if it wasn’t enough.” He turned to look at her, eyes alight with emotion. “I wake up in this keep, in this room and in this bed, next to you, and it feels as if it is all a dream, because never in a millenia could I earn enough favor from the gods to grant me this life. I don’t mean the crown, or the titles, or the ridiculous songs about the bastard turned king who fought in the great war. This life, with you...I don’t know if I deserve it sometimes.”

“ _Jon_ ,” she breathed, taking his face in her hands. “You cannot measure your life in ‘deserved’ and ‘granted’ and ‘earned’. You will go mad if you follow that logic.”

His hands wrapped around hers, and he leaned in until their foreheads were touching. “But do you ever look back, and think–”

“I don’t look back. I just don’t, because…”

_Because if I do, I am lost._

The thought came to her, but as just a reflex, nothing more. She swallowed them down, feeling the bitterness in them as she proudly remembered where and who she had been–

_an exiled princess,_

_a widowed khaleesi,_

_a beggar queen,_

_an outsider ruling a foreign land._  

–and then reminded herself of where and who she was now.

She might be the queen of a broken land, but she had friends, loved ones, Jon.

She was _home_.

“If I do look back,” she corrected, a ghost of a smile forming on her lips, “I see my mistakes. I see the lessons I learned, and I see that path that led me here. I remember that I survived. _You_ survived. All that pain and loss, and we survived anyways. I hold onto that, and then I remind myself to look ahead, because the road we walk no doubt will be hard, but I have so much more now than I did then. So much more to fight for, to protect. I have you, and we can do this. Together.”

Dany squeezed her eyes shut as she finished, fighting off tears. Jon wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in tight. She breathed him in, slowly, relishing the calm after that storm of a conversation.

For how long they stood there, she did not know, but when she did pull back, an enormous warmth bloomed in her chest because she saw that finally, _finally_ , Jon was smiling.


End file.
